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Topic: Is winter milk my problem? (Read 1849 times)

For my cheesemaking classes, I use creamline milk from a smallish organic dairy. The milk is gently pasturized at 145 degrees F and is not homogenized. I pick it up the day it is delivered to the local store - the milk was produced by the cows the day before delivery.

I've never had any trouble using this milk to make mozzarella for the class before, but yesterday the curd was obviously horribly over acidified and just turned to mush when heat was applied to it. Putting some in the microwave ended up in a delicious cheese sauce.

I've also been experimenting with a 30 minute mozz recipe with this milk and had utter failure.

This is the latest in the winter that I've run my class, so I'm really hoping it is the winter milk and that by the time my next class comes up the milk quality will have improved. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

I have no idea what the problem could be, but I just made several batches of mozzarella with winter milk (raw) and they came out just fine. Yields are high, but other then that things are going the same. So I don't think that winter is the problem?

Karen - smallish, organic dairy might be the clue. I use similar milk pasteurized to just 145F - "IN THEORY". I have had a couple of failures just like yours on a big scale (38 gallons). When pressed, my farmer admitted that his son had fallen asleep during processing and WAY over pasteurized the milk. After completely rejecting a couple of entire milk shipments, that hasn't happened again.

If you are using store bought milk, the pasteurization will be automatically controlled and very standardized. With farmstead milk, it is more luck of the draw. I know how much calcium I use, I know the the floc time, and how well the curd sets. With the over pasteurization, my curds shattered into smaller pieces, so I knew what the problem was. If this happens with store bought milk you can try increasing calcium the next time or just cange brands.

I do use CaCl when using this milk for the class. I do not use a ph meter, never have, never intend to.

While it is a smallish organic dairy, they bottle their milk and deliver it to stores all over the area - so maybe not as small as I had implied. I'm sure they are on an automated system.

I've just never had problems like this before with this milk.

The students were completely okay with it, which I thought was really cool. They said that they liked it that I could at least give some ideas of how to use cheese "failures", rather than just tossing it out.